This remington keyboard layout is brought to
you by Tangere. This is a by-product of our deep engagement in
e-learning in Hindi with one of our customers. We found out, that one
of the main reason for non-participation in course forum for the
learners was that they were not able to type as easily in Hindi as
they would be able to do on their desktop computers. These learners
were most adept in typing using Kruti Dev font or Dev Lys font for
Devanagari.

We initially took the direction integrating
various already existing converters but found multiple
issues. Computer Implementations of Devanagari unicode typing is
broadly compartmentalized today into 3 major buckets of typing
methods

Typing Methods

Transliteration

Transliteration applies best to those typist, who can express their
thoughts in Hindi but have not learnt any Hindi keyboard layout.

Two popular solutions are from Google and Microsoft. In this method
the user types phonetic Hindi in Roman script and when the word
completes the system converts this into Unicode Hindi. If one
doesn’t like the conversion, then one has to press a backspace at
word end, and a drop down list of other possible options comes up
from which one can choose an alternate transliteration.

While it is very often correct as it guesses the most common usage of
phonetics, it many a times gives wrong suggestions with respect to
matras or picks up one of the two possible ways of writing a word,
while the user intends to use another. Once wrongly chosen it requires
corrections.

Inscript Keyboard Layout

One can read more details about Inscript Keyboard Layout
here. This is
a keyboard layout standardized by the Government of India (GoI), and
has gone through some revisions based on evolution in Unicode
standards. Inscript keyboard layout is somewhat popular with Hindi
Journalists who are required to write blogs or articles on Internet.
The reality however is that despite being a GoI standard, practically
all the typing in government offices still happens using the Remington
layout. It is extremely hard to change the typing habits of a natural
typist. A similar attempt has been made in English keyboards when
there were
some suggestions made for people to move from Qwerty to Dvorak keyboard
but Qwerty stays to be a very popular keyboard form

Remington Keyboard Layout

Remington keyboard layout is by far the most popular way of typing
Devanagari script. This layout was made popular by the company with
this name. They were the most popular manufacturers of Devangari
typewriters in India. The keyboard layout has thus come to be known as
Remington layout. Prior to dawn of Internet era, practically all the
Hindi typist have been used to this keyboard layout.

There have been many attempts made to arrive at Unicode conversion of
the Remington keyboard layout. However because of the way many
characters combine in Devangari and it’s unicode interpretation, they
all have deficiencies to the extent to render them non useful for
fluent typewriting. This is a major gap between what people naturally
prefer and how it is interpreted by the computer. The problem has been
made grave by the fact that the standardization committees have chosen
a different layout altogether and thus sidelined this large set of
Hindi typing community. We also feel that this is by far the single
most important reason for very limited usage of computers in internet
era among Hindi community

Innovations at Tangere with respect to keyboard layout

Most of the Hindi typist know the remington style typing as Kruti
Dev font as this font visually mimics the Devanagari remington
keymap. However Kruti Dev as used in word processors like Microsoft
Word or Open Office Writer etc. internally still uses roman character
set and is thus not unicode. At Tangere, we have appreciated these
gaps and fixed multiple issues with respect to the Remington style
Hindi typing. The trial pad on the website is a result of overcoming
many such limitations and providing the most natural way of Unicode
typing for all people adept with Remington style keyboards. For example,
the typical problems associated with छोटी इ की मात्रा especially when
associated with संयुक्ताक्षर have been resolved. We encourage the
typists to use this pad frequently to type.